Fuck pants…….. get high & play video games.

#theaterlife

Now…. I am risking everything to invite you into my 1 woman club, #theaterlife. Welcome. This is something I started when I became social media savvy. When I learned to use hashtags and what the actual fucking point of the damn things were. Pretty much, when Instagram became a thing. When you look up this particular hashtag you will most likely find a bunch of theater nerds in the fashion of performance theater, musical theater, or something of that nature. That is definitely not me. I haven’t done any acting besides voice acting on a local podcast and even that I was terrible at. In high school my theater teacher told me I have a good “theater voice” but it was never anything I got into. I guess I am too shy. Id rather hide behind a microphone or computer screen. This type of theater life is strictly job related.

I work at a movie theater as an Assistant Manager. I won’t reveal which company in hopes of keeping my job as long as possible. How I see it right now is, if I was to lose my job over this blog, it was meant to be. At least I had great run and got to share my stories. I have worked at this theater since I was 16. That puts me at about 11 years. Jesus, I haven’t counted in a while. It has for real been so fucking long. This was my first job and I started at the bottom of the totem pole. Working concession- selling food, moving up to box- selling tickets, then guest services- answering phones and taking customer complaints, to now where I basically own the place. Okay, I don’t own it but I pretty much do what I want. Over the last 11 years I’ve had a lot of fun, broken a lot of rules and have gotten so stressed and angry that I have wanted to walk out “drop the mic” style. You know, something people would remember you for. Starting a porno movie in a full theater, or deleting the content from every projector and walking out. My anger only stems from my boss and the current company that owns my theater, not the job itself. I actually love my job and you will soon find out why.

The movie theater has become much like my second home. I’ve developed a small family that has changed members multiple times over the years. But the fun never stops. Once every couple of weeks I will tell you a little more about my #theaterlife. 95% of it will be pure fun with stories of theater shenanigans including pictures and videos to prove it. I am going to try to lay it out where I will tell you a story from the past and a story from the present. Most of the pictures and videos I have are more recent, but I am working on getting some old stuff from former partners in crime.

Pictured above was my family over 6 years ago. There are only 2 other people besides myself that still work with me pictured here. I am pictured on the top right throwing up gang signs. This was before I acquired my “Pimpson” nickname, that came a few years later. Most of this team has moved on to bigger and better things. Or at least different things. We all talked about “escaping the theater,” some of us just did a better job at getting out than others.

Tonight I am going to start you off with a video of the Movie Theater Harlem Shake that I made a couple of years ago. You know, when the Harlem Shake was the hot shit and broke the internet for like a week. Well of course I had to make my own and what a better place to do it than in a movie theater. Check it out:

Not the greatest Harlem Shake video you’ve seen but we had fun with it. BT Dubs, I am the banana with the Retro Lancer. 🙂 It took us quite a few shots to film this because it was hard to make it seem like people were watching a movie before the beat dropped. Which is why we came up with the idea of wrapping someone in christmas lights and having them be the opening dancer. I think it came out alright. I’m sure the night crew loved cleaning up after us. Bags of popcorn were just thrown in the air during the filming of this video. Not much popcorn throwing ended up in the final take of the video because we threw most of it in the first couple of takes. But you can see one of my friends dancing with a bag of popcorn.

I’m sure over the years the night crew has come to hate our theater. I’ve often wondered if other theaters managers do the kind of shit we have done in their theater. The night crew has always consisted of a bunch of non-english speaking people. I’ve never been quite sure on the ethnicity of these people but I am pretty sure it has changed a few times. My boss always just assumed they were Mexicans but that’s just darn right racist. I am going to give you a little background information before I continue with my story. The night crew always comes in around the time the last movie gets out. Which now days are about 1 am and they are usually there until 10am. This is the only reason I have yet to throw a giant party in the theater. Can you picture that? I’ve thought about throwing themed movie parties like 80s night, playing a different 80s movie in every theater. My movie theater has a total of 20 individual theaters, that’s a lot of fucking 80s movies. I’ve already come up with a list for the off-chance that the night crew one day goes on strike and I can cause chaos last-minute. If it ever happens, you’re all invited. Heres my list:

The Breakfast Club

E.T.

Ferris Buellers Day Off

Back to the Future

Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark

Ghostbusters

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

The Goonies

Star Wars Episode V

Beetlejuice

Aliens

The Princess Bride

The Terminator

Return of the Jedi

Blade Runner

Top Gun

Predator

The Little Mermaid

Scarface

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Yeah, so a big movie party would be great. I’ve also thought about one giant man hunt game, a gaming party, or a party party. Man hunt would be fun because I could turn the lights out in the whole theater. Pitch black, 20 house theater for man hunt? Sounds like a dream. A gamer party?! I would have Halo: The Master Chief Collection on a couple of screens with a system link for big custom capture the flag games. Horror games on a couple of screens for some scary fun that would mostly be one or two people playing and the rest of the people watching. Some Nintendo games on a few screens, Mario Party is a must. The options are endless. I could name a million of my favorite games that I would play on the big screen but we will leave my gamer taste for another post. A party party would probably be the worst idea because the theater would probably be destroyed. But that would be another drop the mic way of quitting huh? Id probably get arrested too though. Oh well, I can dream.

Playing games on the big screen is something that has happened a lot since I’ve worked at the theater. Just not in a huge party fashion. Most of them were run by Gamestop when they were open right next to the theater. Gamestop would allow anyone that preordered a game for a big game release to play the game on the big screen while they waited for that midnight release time. I’ve played a lot of games on the big screen that way. I’ve also just thrown a handful of games on the big screen purely for me and my friends pleasure. Its become a little easier over the years because we started out with all film 35mm projectors so we had to run the games off of the pre show projectors which were just shitty little projectors the average person could buy for their living room. Now we’ve got some Sony 4Ks. Yeahhhhh baby. Digital bliss. Here’s some shitty pictures of some big screen gaming I’ve done.

Halo 4

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

Mass Effect 3

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

Gears of War 2

FIFA

I’ll leave you with that for tonight. Next week ill tell you about all of the famous people I’ve met working at the theater and some fire worthy shit I’ve done. Hooray!